


this is why we walk down stairs

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Humor, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 13:46:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“But isn’t it depressing staying here?” Isaac asked. “I mean, you couldn’t pay me to go back to my old house.”</p><p>“It’s only depressing when you two stop sweeping to ask me if you should be emptying the dust pans into urns,” Derek replied dryly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is why we walk down stairs

In all honesty, Derek would’ve been perfectly fine with staying in the abandoned Hale house up in the woods. It was true that the place had it’s faults, like the fact that the lack of a roof meant it was constantly leaking and he could still see dark stains on the floors where his family members had fallen as the fire ate away at their flesh. Still, he had grown up in that house. It was familiar, and even if familiar now carried that sharp smell of smoke, he longed for it.

Besides, after the fire had happened, Derek and his sister had taken to sleeping in abandoned homes (sometimes there were some not so abandoned homes, although it was really the Clarks’ fault that they had been caught- they had totally intended on bailing out two days before the family was supposed to come back from vacation), so it wasn’t like he needed the luxury of electricity or running water. His new pack, however, felt otherwise.  
______________________

“This place still smells like death,” Erica grouched, tossing the can of air freshener into the corner of the living room with the last ten she had used in an attempt to make the house smell winter fresh.

From his spot on the couch, Isaac muttered, “I wonder why,” under his breath. 

Scowling, Derek tossed the can he was holding. It was too quick for the boy’s eyes to follow, so it met his head with a satisfying noise. Derek let a slight smirk replace his scowl at Isaac’s indignant expression before turning to face Erica. She had a point in that the house smelt like death, but a lot of things had died here, like that raccoon they had found in Laura’s old room. And his family. 

“If it bugs you so much-” Derek began, about to invite his beta to fuck off and go to her own house for the night, but Erica swiftly cut him off.

“You should move.”

“That’s not what I was going to say. Not even close,” Derek grumbled, sinking into the lawn chair he had stolen from Scott’s backyard. 

“My suggestions still stands.”

“How would he even be able to move?” Isaac spoke up, looking over at Derek with a prominent frown on his face. “He needs a job first, otherwise he’d just get kicked out for missing rent.”

“I don’t need a job,” Derek snapped. He tried to keep his voice from lowering into a growl, because there was no way he was going to let them have the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him, but it was hard to keep his tone even when he had to deal with their combined stupidity for hours on end. 

“You will when you move,” Erica pointed out.

He swatted her away when she darted forward to try to grab the air freshener from him, baring his teeth in the beginning of a snarl. She didn’t look fazed, but she also didn’t make another move for the air freshener, so Derek counted it as a win.

“I don’t need a job,” he said, looking between the two of them, “because I’m not going to move.”

“But isn’t it depressing staying here?” Isaac asked. “I mean, you couldn’t pay me to go back to my old house.”

“It’s only depressing when you two stop sweeping to ask me if you should be emptying the dust pans into urns,” Derek replied dryly. He stood up after he spoke with every intention of going up to his room (and it was a room, even if he had to set up a tarp so it wouldn’t rain on him while he slept), but Erica moved into his space before he could take a single step.

She looked at him with wide eyes, like she was about to try reasoning with a scared little puppy that was prone to peeing on the floors and running away from its problems. It made him grit his teeth, because, while Derek Hale was a lot of things, sad little puppy that pissed on the floor was not one of them.

“What now?” he asked when she didn’t speak up right away.

“We just want you to be happy.”

That caught him off guard. Erica wasn’t emotionally stunted, but she also wasn’t the type to express her feelings. The last time Erica had been irritated and snapping at everyone in the house (aside from Derek and Boyd, because Derek was alpha and nobody snapped at Boyd) Stils had suggested they sit down to talk about her feelings. She had thrown him into a wall. Not hard, but still. It had made her point. Erica didn’t do feelings. 

As if she was reading his mind, Erica sighed and rolled her eyes. “Look, if you’re not happy, then you’re just a douche,” she told him. “When you’re a douche, you just get really mean whenever we train. I know I can heal, but it’s still not fun to break my arm every night. So, you need to get happy. First step to happiness, having nice things. Like an actual house.”

“Who said I wasn’t happy?” Derek asked.

Erica and Isaac exchanged a look before laughing. He scowled at them, crossing his arms over his chest as he waited for them to shut the fuck up.

“Dude, I’ve seen terminal hospital patients that were happier than you,” Isaac chuckled.

Derek’s scowl deepened. “Don’t call me dude,” he snapped before moving past Erica. “I’m going on a run. Spray one more can of air freshener in this house and I will gut you,” he added, letting his voice deepen into a growl. 

He glared at them both for good measure before turning and stalking out the door.  
______________________

For two near-perfect days, neither Erica nor Isaac brought up him moving again. They kept spraying air freshener when they thought he wasn’t around to notice, but Derek figured there were worse things they could do. 

It was on the third day that he came home from a late night (or early morning, depending on how you looked at it) McDonald’s run to Boyd sitting at a table that had suddenly found its way into the kitchen.

“When did I get a kitchen table?” Derek asked, choosing to ignore the papers that Boyd clutched in one large hand.

“Isaac thought it’d be more dramatic if I wasn’t sitting on your raggedy ass couch.”

Boyd’s reply stung a little, because Derek was proud of that couch. It wasn’t easy to steal something that big from a garage sale. However, he didn’t let his hurt feelings show. Out of all the things to take personal offense to, Derek figured his couch wasn’t something that should be very high on the list.

“You should sit down,” Boyd added, waving his hand at a lawn chair that he had also taken from Scott’s house.

“You should tell me why you’re here,” Derek said, frowning as a thought suddenly struck him. “Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but that’s not the point,” Boyd said, laying his papers out on the table as he spoke. 

Curiosity drove Derek closer and laziness made him sit down in the chair that Boyd had motioned at before. Frowning, he leaned forward to examine the papers that Boyd had laid out. Every single one was an advertisement for an apartment somewhere in Beacon Hills. 

“Did Erica tell you to bring me these?” Derek growled. He couldn’t help it. He had never aken kindly to people pressing things that really didn’t need to be pressed.

“No, Scott.”

He looked up at that, eyebrows raising. “Scott wants me to move, too?”

“Scott thinks you need to find a better place to hold meetings, because this house depresses him and makes him want to cry in the corner. So, yes. He wants you to move.”

Derek sank back in his chair, eyeing Boyd for a few moments. His other betas would’ve been squirming under his gaze, but Boyd was more stoic than any of them. That was why Derek liked him and didn’t mind having him over all the time. 

“Do you think I should move?” Derek asked after a few minutes. 

“You’re technically trespassing, since this house isn’t yours anymore. And you were a person of interest, so it’s not likely that the police think kindly of you.”

“I was let go,” Derek snapped. “And that doesn’t answer the question.”

Boyd rolled his eyes as he stood to go. “Duh, I think you should move. You’re gonna have to eventually,” he added.

Derek opened his mouth to say something, but Boyd was already out the door.

Fucking supernatural werewolf speed.  
______________________

It was possible that Scott had been trying to startle him when he slammed his cup onto the table, but it was also possible that he was (once again) rebelling against Derek’s No Cups On The Table Without A Goddamn Coaster rule. Either way, the action wasn’t very impressive, and Derek looked up from his book with a scowl.

“What do you want?” he demanded, not bothering to try and be nice. Unlike the other teen wolves that Derek constantly found invading his space, Scott didn’t really have any business being here. He had made it perfectly clear to Derek that he wasn’t pack and they weren’t even close to being friends. Not that Derek was sore about that, considering Scott was a teenager and he was very much not. 

For once, Scott didn’t try to bother with beating around the bush. Instead, he pulled some papers from the front of his shorts (Derek didn’t know why he shoved papers in the front of his shorts; he knew they had pockets) and tried to hand them over.

Derek tried his best not to make a face, but it was hard. “You can just put them on the table,” he said. He had to clean it later anyway. 

“Erica told me to tell you that you should move,” Scott told him as he sat down and laid out the papers like Boyd had. Derek wondered if Erica had told them both to spread out papers like this. Maybe she thought it was intimidating. It wasn’t, but if that’s what she thought, it was cute that she was at least trying.

“Why do you care about where I live?” Derek demanded. As he spoke, he lifted his book and tried to pretend that he was reading, but he couldn’t get past the sentence he had been on when Scott had barged in. 

Scott frowned at his question. “We aren’t best buds, but I still care if you’re living in a dump.”

“Dump?” He asked, lowering his book again. He let a little bit of red bleed into his eyes just to see Scott flinch and fumble to recover.

“I mean...not a dump, uhm...it’s just....”

“I don’t care if you call it a dump,” Derek muttered after a few moments of Scott looking at him, opening and closing his mouth like a fish. “I’m not blind. It’s a dump.”

“So why do you stay?”

“Because I don’t care.”

“Oh. Well,” Scott leaned back uneasily in his chair. “Erica told me to try. I totally tried.”

“Okay. You can leave, then,” Derek grumbled, returning to the thrilling adventures of...somebody. God, he really hated reading.

“Yeah, I guess I should. I have to go pick up my mom.” Scott stood as he spoke and he was about to turn around when he paused, staring at the chair with a frown. “Dude!”

“Don’t call me dude.”

“You stole our lawn chairs! I was looking for those. Mom thought it was the creepy neighbor- she almost called the police,” Scott added.

“You can have it back if you want,” Derek said, gesturing at the chair with his free hand. “Really, go ahead. I’m fine with only having one. Makes people less likely to sit down and try to talk real estate.”

“Well, in that case,” Scott grinned, “keep it. A gift from me to you.”

“Oh, joy.”  
_____  
They were in the middle of training when it happened.

For once, he was letting the betas have a chance at blocking him. There was no point in training if all he did was teach them how to hit, but not how to help themselves. Normally, the session would've been held outside, where there was much more room for the wolves to move around. However, it was pouring outside. Derek didn't give a single flying fuck about the rain, because he needed a shower anyway, and if he got one while standing outside that meant he didn't have to sneak into the boy's locker room later. Isaac, however, wouldn't stop bitching about how the rain would ruin his scarf. Derek had asked why he was wearing it when it was just going to get bloody anyway, but Isaac had scoffed at him like he just didn’t get fashion, which...well...he had a point.

Derek stood silently in what had once been his parent's room. He could hear the other wolves downstairs, trying to figure out which direction he would be coming from. A small growl slipped past his lips as he rolled his neck back, allowing the wolf to break free from its carefully constructed cage. His hands hung loose at his sides, claws kept shorter than normal. He didn't go soft on his betas when they were training, but there was no need to try and maim them. 

His lips curled away from his teeth as he opened his mouth and let out a noise that was a mixture of a snarl and a howl. His position in the pack made it easy for him to isolate the other's heartbeats, even from this far away, and he smirked as they all picked up slightly. Even if this was all practice, he knew they couldn't help but get caught up in the idea that this was going to happen one day. Nothing he taught them was ever done simply because he enjoyed training.

With another low snarl, Derek took off, making sure to be as quiet as possible. It was easy, considering he knew where to step so he would make no noise. As he moved through the upper levels of the house, he could hear the snarls pick up downstairs, but none of them moved to find him. He had told them that they had to stay put and wait.

Knowing that they all expected him to come from anywhere but the main staircase (he had heard Isaac suggesting they go wait there, but Erica had told him that was too obvious), Derek quickly came to the top of it. Of course, he had a thing about stairs. He didn't like them. There had been one too many ungraceful tumbles that Laura had never allowed him to fully forget. So, it was habit that made him launch himself from the top of the stairs.

It was not habit that made him fall through the floor.

That was just bad luck.

Derek would have liked to say that he didn't yelp when the floor gave out beneath him, but that would be a great big lie. As soon as he felt himself falling into the basement, he reached out for some sort of purchase, but there was nothing to hold onto. The noise he let out when he hit the basement floor, lying on top of some rubble that dug painfully into his pack, was the same noise his sister used to make when the second step squeaked every time she went down, ruining her attempts at sneaking late night cookies. 

For a few moments, Derek allowed himself to simply lie on the floor. He only looked up when he became aware of his betas gathering around the edge. Isaac had a look of concern painted on his face, but Derek could tell that the teen was close to giving in and laughing. Boyd and Erica didn't even bother with mock concern. 

Embarrassment rushed over him as the two teens openly laughed. He considered pretending that he was hurt, just to make them feel bad, but he knew that they wouldn't fall for it. He had survived being impaled on an alpha's claws. There was no way that a fall into the basement would do anything more than destroy every last shred of dignity he had. 

"Weren't you ever taught to use the stairs?" Boyd asked, smiling as he spoke. 

"Shut the fuck up," Derek snarled, but there was no heat behind his words. With an irritated huff, he picked himself up off the ground and continued glaring up at his three recruits. "Isaac," he snapped and, for a moment, the boy paled considerably. 

"Uhm...yeah?"

"Go get me those ads Boyd printed out," Derek demanded, kicking at a board as he spoke. "I'm moving." 

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this at too early in the morning and forget my note at the end, but then I forgot what I was gonna say. Whatevs, man. I'mma just go on the fly. I'd like to thank my fingers, for being capable of typing. Ya'll rock, never change. I'd like to give a shout out to anyone who comments or leaves a kudos or even bothers to read cause ya'll stroke my ego and give me fuel to go through day the sarcastic little lady I am. 
> 
> If any of you want to find me, I have a tumblr. My url is killblaine. But I usually go there to post about serious stuff or reblog stupid shit so you were warned.


End file.
